October 06, 2006
We're not losing momentum in Iraq. The Pentagon strategy is a very deliberate form of tough love that is forcing the Iraqis to defend their own country.Arabs are culturally the most passive, fence-sitting people on the planet. By their own admission they follow the strongest leader out there. If we had sent 500,000 troops to Iraq and fought a Soviet-style counterinsurgency, the end result would have been an Iraq with no incentive to do the very hard work of creating viable fighting forces from scratch. We would've been their new masters in perpetuity.
We also can't attack Iran and Syria right now because the Iranians would then activate their Iraqi militias and send a million Basij into Iraq. Syria would do a Saddam and start firing WMD-tipped missiles at Israel. The entire region could go up in flames.
Don't let the media convince you that things are going badly in Iraq. The Anbar tribes are now fighting al Qaeda on their own initiative, and the Shi'ite-dominated government is slowly dismantling al Sadr's Mahdi Army. "Experts" predicted that neither of these things would ever happen because of secular loyalties, but they are happening, and only because we're forcing the Iraqis to stand up and fight for their country.
Finally, take a look at what happened when the French, Soviets, and Russians fought Muslim insurgencies with the kind of aggressive, "proactive" approach so many Americans claim to want.
The French lost 18,000 in Algeria, a KIA rate three and a half times ours. The Soviets lost 14,000 in Afghanistan, a KIA rate twice ours. The Russians officially lost 5500 in the First Chechen War of 1994-96, but Soldiers' Mothers of Russia puts the actual number at 14,000, a KIA rate ten times ours. Nobody knows how many Russian troops have died in the Second Chechen War, but Soldiers' Mothers of Russia had the number at 11,000 by 2003.
Our strategy in Iraq is sound. It's keeping our own casualties down, and it's forcing the Iraqis to defend themselves.
Don't despair. We're winning.
Posted by: Good Lt. at
03:09 PM
| Comments (22)
| Add Comment
Post contains 371 words, total size 2 kb.
Posted by: Rhyleh at October 06, 2006 03:30 PM (Q+ifs)
Ask any Israeli and you will find the cold truth, the only good arab is a dead arab.
May Jesus bless America
Posted by: Aaron Phillips at October 06, 2006 03:36 PM (WbrFu)
(clicks ruby red slippers)
Posted by: Greg at October 06, 2006 03:38 PM (/+dAV)
Posted by: Dorothy at October 06, 2006 03:40 PM (/+dAV)
If we just became Zionists and merged with Israel, letting them take over, we'd know exactly what to do with those dirty A-rhabs.
I'm just so upset, I'm going to take a shower and scrub myself until I bleed.
Posted by: Dorothy Goldsteinbergenstein at October 06, 2006 03:46 PM (/+dAV)
Posted by: Dorothy Goldsteinbergenstein at October 06, 2006 03:48 PM (/+dAV)
Posted by: anarchistmanifesto at October 06, 2006 03:52 PM (52jO/)
Posted by: tbone at October 06, 2006 04:12 PM (HGqHt)
Regarding the assertion "We also can't attack Iran and Syria right now"; what about a round-the-clock air campaign against the Mullah's missiles and nuke facilities and their main props i.e. the "Basiji" and "Revolutionary Guard" concentrations?
Is that also currently not possible for the US?
Posted by: Garduneh Mehr at October 06, 2006 05:31 PM (vixLB)
The fact that we are now too 'PC' to use proven counter-insurgency methods like 'draining the swamp' means that we are instantly at a disadvantage.
In an insurgency the insurgents not only know the terrain better, but they have the luxury of time, as once the IRA said to Margaret Thatcher 'We only have to be lucky once, you have to be lucky always"
so not only do they have the home town advantage, the occupier has to play defensive to hold any advantage they have gained. Pouring in more troops doesn't always have the advantage people think in an insurgency, it can in fact lead to much greater casualties for the occupier.
If you are unwilling to pull out all the stops and use effective counter-insurgency tactics (like the British in the Malayan Emergency) you have two other options pull out, or order more body bags.
Posted by: davec at October 06, 2006 05:38 PM (QkWqQ)
Let's assume the guy is right. The Pentagon planned to leave a power vacuum that Iraqis would have to fill. That would contradict leaving al-Sadr still breathing. It would also imply the U.S. let terrorism against Iraqis continue so as to encourage them to step up.
This was a plan? It sounds like the anonymous emailer looks at a pile of bricks and sees a house.
Posted by: Matt at October 06, 2006 06:30 PM (3rZnB)
Posted by: ck at October 06, 2006 07:04 PM (Hd3gf)
Posted by: jesusland joe at October 06, 2006 07:49 PM (rUyw4)
Is it the actual plan? I sincerely doubt it.
Posted by: Rich at October 06, 2006 08:21 PM (89Rw1)
Posted by: Some Guy at October 07, 2006 08:19 AM (wkRws)
Posted by: Some Guy at October 07, 2006 08:20 AM (wkRws)
that they're pretty much all cowards, with only a few who have the
balls to stand up and take charge like Saddam did, mainly because of
what Saddam did to anyone else who looked like they wanted any power.
Their culture is so screwed up that the basic characteristic of
invidvidual achievement, which is a hallmark of Western man, is an
automatic death sentence in their world. Of course, once you've gone
through eons of this type of natural selection, with the exceptional
getting weeded out pretty heavily, you're left with only the most
ruthless and savage, and a bunch of cowardly sycophants to kiss their
asses. We certainly have those types here too though, mainly because we
don't kill them, but we call them "democrats" or "greg"; they are those
without the balls to do anything noteworthy, but are glad to join in
the mob to destroy anyone who is exceptional, which explains why
liberals love muslims so much, even though if the muslims get their
wish, and establish a global caliphate, the lefturds will be the first
at the chopping block because they're all degenerate scumbags.
Posted by: Improbulus Maximus at October 07, 2006 09:01 AM (v3I+x)
Is there any evidence that MSM even knows what a plan is? The Marine Corps and various folks in the Potomac Institute, who advise the Marines, had pretty much settled on this model of the war within the first few months of the occupation. I happen to know this because I interacted with some of their planners, but they also shared some of their working papers on the internet.
Of course it was the plan. And we pretty much always said so. The trick is to do the handoff in such a way that we remain friendly with the new Iraqi regime, but it also has enough legitimacy to rule. People were talking about this even before the invasion.
You've just never listened, that's all. And the media has never paid attention to strategy, or bothered to suss it out. They arrived at their narrative that everything was a mess a long time ago, mostly because they're too biased and lazy to give a rip.
Posted by: Demosophist at October 07, 2006 10:48 AM (kUTkq)
I know Afghanistan does not get as much press attention, but I have wondered what the NATO plan is for Afghanistan? I have not heard if NATO is creating, and training a national military there, or even a Police force -- this is one of the most important things needed, due to the Taliban's intended plan for the NATO operation, which is to simply wait us out, and then topple the current regime.
Iraq has obviously become the forefront for the war, it is obvious that Afghanistan has not attracted the amount of foreign national Jihadi's as it did in the Soviet-Afghanistan campaign -- it's important to note that the Soviets during their war captured the capital and other strategic areas to, but lost them as time went on. If NATO does not consolidate a plan to hand back the power, like the U.S has for Iraq, and train the country to defend itself it will most likely fall back into the hands of extremists like the Taliban/Al-Qaeda in less than a decade.
At this point Afghanistan is looking to outlast Iraq , and largely ignored by the U.S media is the increased violence occurring in places like Helmand province, such surges in Iraq are often labeled as 'quagmires' or 'proof' that the insurgency is just getting stronger, not so in Afghanistan.
It is interesting that the multinational NATO plan seems to be miles behind Iraq, and is getting much more costly, yet Iraq is labeled as a failure, and Afghanistan the "model". I guess the daily death watch / coffin counting in Iraq helps push that projection also.
Posted by: davec at October 07, 2006 01:07 PM (QkWqQ)
Posted by: davec at October 07, 2006 01:19 PM (QkWqQ)
Pre-sweetened version: Our planning is causing us to win in Iraq.
Posted by: kindlingman at October 08, 2006 09:24 AM (N1Pq+)
Spare me the 'you never listened' slur. I listened and still do, I supported the invasion and still do. I avoid using the MSM for analysis or commentary.
That said, it is hard to escape the impression that expectations were incorrect, and therefore so were the approaches.
Mistakes have been made - big ones. Leaving the borders open, or al-Sadr alive, and the constant ignorance of basic counter-insurgency (mostly by Army - the Marines by most accounts have done better on that score), etc.
Were those things really intentional?
Posted by: Matt at October 08, 2006 11:09 AM (3rZnB)
34 queries taking 0.0448 seconds, 177 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
